Pages

Thursday, January 31, 2013

During the course of my youth group, Rafael invited his boss, Jose Bencosme, to observe. It turns out, Jose is the kind of public servant who gets things done. He oversees the Indotel computer labs of an area encompassing five provinces and was eager to put me to work training his employees to multiply my efforts throughout the greater Moca area. When I finished up with my students at the high school, he was ready and waiting for me with more than 30 adult students, all in charge of computer labs.

Each point represent a computer lab where one or two my students worked

For 8 weeks, I taught a morning group of about 12 and an evening group of about 20 for four hours each every Saturday. Some came from as far away as Gaspar Hernandez on the north coast and Sabana Iglesia in the country’s interior. During the week I keep hours at the lab to provide technical support there and help people who came in to use the computers. I also ended up running around to various labs run by my students and helping them reformat hard drives and troubleshoot problems. It was a very busy time for me. I would typically visit a lab for three or four whole days, talking my student through the various steps of Windows installation, system cloning, and so on. After all was said and done I must have done this at least 10 labs.

My buddy Max Podemski came to visit. Seen here in the
Monumento a los Héroes de la Restauración in Santiago

By the time Summer was coming to a close, I had taught an entire other group of 20 people at a public lab above the post office while simultaneously overhauling its 20 computers. The requests for one-on-one lab help were still rolling in and Jose Bencosme was bugging me to let him plan me a class in nearby Salcedo.